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Lunar Dustbusters

Posted by kdawson on from the wipe-your-feet dept.

Maggie McKee writes "Moon dust could be a source of oxygen and metals. But moon dust could also lodge in astronauts' lungs, possibly triggering long-term health effects. During the relatively short Apollo Moon landing missions nearly 40 years ago, astronauts reported difficulty breathing. So now, before astronauts return to the moon in 2020, NASA is working on a number of ways to reduce the amount of lunar dust astronauts are exposed to — from simple grates on the floor to magnetic wands and giant lint rollers."

8 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Lunar Dust by Harmonious+Botch · · Score: 2, Informative

    RTFA - it's often smaller particles, and there is a lot more of it.

  2. Re:Lunar Dust by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why is Lunar dust so different than "normal" dust and/or sand that we breathe and/or eat every day?

    Because it has not been smoothed down by water and wind. Only hits of meteorites scatter stuff there, and that is not enough to smooth away edges on grains of silica and other rough rocks.

    Anyhow, the solution is simple: Have the astronauts take up smoking so that they have practice :-)

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  3. Before assuming... by Monkey_Genius · · Score: 5, Informative

    That lunar dust is "not hazardous", read this: MICRO-MORPHOLOGY AND TOXICOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF LUNAR DUST The part about "glass shards" really brings the "point" home.

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  4. Re:WTF and ½ ?! by lilomar · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wipe your feet off before entering the airlock Um... did you not read?

    "It turns out what we did in Apollo was probably the worst way we could have handled it operationally," says Kriss Kennedy, project leader for architecture, habitability and integration at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, US. That is because the Apollo landers did not have airlocks, so the astronauts had to live among the dust for days.
    (My emphasis)
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  5. Or pictures for the impatient ones by keeboo · · Score: 2, Informative

    This looks like a nice stuff to breathe.

  6. Re:Because.... by wolf369T · · Score: 1, Informative

    Right, but the astronauts could take the dust inside their Lander and in the Apollo capsule, on their suits or shoes, where they breath normally :)

  7. Re:Lunar Dust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    For starters, most "normal" household dust is flakes of skin, the greater portion not containing the great deal of silicates, metalic compounds and other "hard" materials which the lunar dust seems to mainly composed of. There's also the morphology, size and shape of the individual particles to consider, as they seem to differ quite a bit from the standard earthly variety.

    From what I can gather, from the various articles cited, the closest setting that comes close producing the problem lunar dust presents earth-side is found in mining, volcanic fallout and heavy dust-producing industrial settings and which are not the sort of dust you'd normally breath.

  8. Microwave the dust! by jci · · Score: 2, Informative

    I went to a lunch presentation on returning to the moon. One of the ideas for longer term use like colonization was to make roads by microwaving the regolith.

    The iron melts into a continuous crust instead of being so abrasive and sharp